Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic transmission for a vehicle. More particularly, the present invention relates to a planetary gear train of an automatic transmission for a vehicle that improves power delivery performance and fuel economy by achieving at least nine forward speed stages and widening speed ratio (or gear ratio) with a minimum number of constituent elements being used, and secures linearity of step ratios.
Description of Related Art
Recent increases in oil prices are triggering stiff competition among auto-makers in enhancing fuel consumption of a vehicle.
Such an automatic transmission achieving more speed stages is necessary to maximize power performance and driving efficiency in accordance with downsizing of an engine. Particularly, there is high demand to develop high efficiency multiple-speed stage transmissions having excellent linearity of step ratios that can be used as an index closely related to drivability such as acceleration before and after shift and rhythmical engine speed in order to secure competitiveness of automatic transmission field.
However, in the automatic transmission, as the number of speed stages increase, the number of internal components increase, and as a result, mountability, cost, weight, transmission efficiency, and the like may still deteriorate.
Accordingly, development of a planetary gear train which achieves maximum efficiency with a small number of components is important in order to increase a fuel efficiency enhancement effect through the multiple-speed stages.
In this aspect, in recent years, 8-speed automatic transmissions tend to be implemented and the research and development of a planetary gear train capable of implementing more speed stages has also been actively conducted.
However, since a conventional 8-speed automatic transmission has gear ratio span of 6.5-7.5 (gear ratio span is an important factor for securing linearity of step ratios), improvement of power performance and fuel economy may not be great.
In addition, if 8-speed automatic transmission has gear ratio span larger than 9.0, it is hard to secure linearity of step ratios. Therefore, driving efficiency of an engine and drivability of a vehicle may be deteriorated, and thus, development of high efficiency automatic transmissions which achieve at least nine forward speed stages is necessary.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.